Love the game... But it's really not ready for release!

Trieste53 wrote:
The only issue I've ever had is crashing if I scroll too fast in friend's cities. I can live with that. What I don't understand is, if someone is so unhappy with the game, why keep playing? There are other things you could be doing.

Valid point and I'm coming to this conclusion myself. It's ashame though - because when the game works I really enjoy it. It also means that the money I've spent on the game to enjoy it has all been wasted if I just walk away.

There are NO tasks that you HAVE to spend donuts. The collect money tasks (that haven't happened for months now anyway) only require you to collect money from your houses, restaurants or businesses. If you used donuts all you were doing was skipping the task instead of waiting till you could collect.

I also don't believe the thing about characters being assigned tasks and then wandering round minutes later. I've been playing over 9 months and its never happened. It would only happen if your net went out of range and the game kicked you out straight after setting a task for someone

There isn't a sync button but if you go in and out of your friends list it syncs.

There is connectivity problems but theyre not that bad for me anyway.

FBMbmx12 wrote:
hopefully your problems will end and you can play normally like me. Good luck! and be cautious spending real $ if you are still experiencing problems.

I won't be spending anymore for a long time... (On any EA game for that matter). I need to be convinced that this game works and is solid before even considering spending more money. I've already spent more than I would on a console or computer title.

Hopefully they'll get it sorted and hopefully over time they can restore my faith in a company for so long I've thought a lot of. :-)

MrBukey wrote:

- Inconsistencies during play - click a thumb/building $ after a task and some characters you can assign another task to right away by tapping them, others force you to collect the XP and cash first. When you have lots of characters doing a 60 minute task at say the Kwik-E-Mart this becomes very frustrating. If it was consistently one way or the other it wouldn't be so annoying.

Wait until they move away from the stacks of cash before clicking characters to assign new tasks...in my experience, this isn't a "having to collect cash" problem as much as it is a "game doesn't know what you're tapping" problem. If there's something to be collected (cash,xp) and you're clicking in that area, the game will assume you want the cash, not a character.

That's something I find highly annoying when I'm trying to move around small bunches of flowers, shrubs, etc. I often have to click five times before it figures out what I want, and oftentimes the thing it does choose is far away from where my finger tap is. It's not bad enough to make me not play, obviously, but the touch capabilities could be a lot more refined.

caprici424 wrote:

Wait until they move away from the stacks of cash before clicking characters to assign new tasks...in my experience, this isn't a "having to collect cash" problem as much as it is a "game doesn't know what you're tapping" problem. If there's something to be collected (cash,xp) and you're clicking in that area, the game will assume you want the cash, not a character.

That's generally what I do. For some characters it works (like Homer) for others, it doesn't (like Cletus).

Also, you can absolutely choose whether or not to spend donuts...all depends on your willingness to live without premium items. I haven't spent a dime, partly because the game is a bit glitchy, but mostly because I don't like the a la carte payment method. I would have paid $5 dollars for the entire game in the app store, but that's not the way EA wants it to work (and they're clearly making much more money this way). Their decision, my choice. Thank goodness for all the people who DO spend money, and I love looking at their towns, but all the server issues, etc., would annoy me a whole lot more if I had invested $100+ in this game. So I don't. :D

MrBukey wrote:

FBMbmx12 wrote:
hopefully your problems will end and you can play normally like me. Good luck! and be cautious spending real $ if you are still experiencing problems.

I won't be spending anymore for a long time... (On any EA game for that matter). I need to be convinced that this game works and is solid before even considering spending more money. I've already spent more than I would on a console or computer title.

Hopefully they'll get it sorted and hopefully over time they can restore my faith in a company for so long I've thought a lot of. :-)

That's the correct approach. Forget the people who tell you everything's "your fault", and that "most people" aren't having issues-- they don't have the faintest idea if that's the case or not. I'm suffering through a lot of the same problems you are, and if it doesn't improve I'll quit playing. It's too bad, though-- it's a great game.

Chibihalo wrote:
You know I love it when someone throws around their profession like it makes them some kind of expert in another field all together (not). You work on servers not designing mobile social town simulation gaming apps like this one. I bet you the programming languages you know aren't even close to what the computer engineers know over at EA. Now if this was about the issues with their servers maybe people would listen to you because it's your field. However, that's not what it is and you don't know any more about the issues people have been having since the relaunch and what's causing them than the rest of us so don't act like you do just because you work with servers all day.

You're complaining at time of the year when the server load is very taxed (now that's something you would be able to give your professional opinion on) because more people are playing at a very consistent rate. A lot of them missed things with Halloween and they don't want to run that risk here. There is a lot of new animation to the game for the rest of the month so people are going to be experiencing issues on their end. Someone connected with EA has said within the last week or two that part of the issues are connected to download rates on our end and with larger and larger Springfields out there some people just can't handle the amount of stuff they have to download from the servers and the game crashes on them. Don't count the game out just yet and say that your "professional" opinion tells you this should have been rereleased. Give it another month for the Christmas updates to get put to bed and people who claim to be "power players" to go back to being once every other day people and lurking the forums again and you'll see a whole different game experience.

You've faux pas'd (sp / punctuation in the right place?) a few times:

- It's not another field altogether. I work (and am involved) with environments that are globally distributed - maybe a slightly smaller scale (only several 100,000s users instead of potentially millions, granted). My areas of expertise are authentication systems (Active Directory), databases (Active Directory, SQL, MySQL), applications (Active Directory, SharePoint, a multitude of bespoke apps), client/server architecture, terminal services (linux bases, MS Remote Desktop, Citrix), web apps (BuddyPress/WordPress, Boonex Dolphin, SharePoint), and networking (WAN/LAN/VPN across a multitude of networking technologies)... Agreed it's not a mobile gaming social network but it is client/server technology that ultimately relies on a database, authentication system and networking components. /Geek.

- Due to my job in managing (building, implementing, supporting) servers, applications and environments (architecting, implementing, supporting) in a global distributed environment, one of the core disciplines I have to work with and plan for is networking and capacity management. I (and not just me, others have said the same) have said a couple of times on here that it feels like resource/capacity issues with servers and/or bandwidth. You even point out that the server load is taxed - and that is something I can give my opinion on... After saying in the previous paragraph I can't...?! Anyway - the point is you should always have the resource required + a percentage overage in capacity. Do EA for this game? Maybe they've been caught off guard with the number of people suddenly playing... But this seems to have happened several times over now, and they're also not responding to support requests in the timescale they have set for themselves and then promise customers.

- With regards to animation... This isn't a terminal server application - in other words, the game in its entirety isn't happening on a remote server with the display being sent to you and the controls back to a remote server. If that was the case then the game would only be a couple of MB on our devices and wouldn't require lots of updates to the devices. The game itself may be taking place on a remote server (in numerical, mathematical form with a database) - but the animations are all local (and is most likely what is causing the large update files of 50 - 70MB+ - but in anycase this is invoked and run locally). This should not be causing issues server side.

- You talk about me mentioning my profession (as not relevant, when I beg to differ) - but then you, without knowing me or my experience, talk about "the programming languages" I know. Sure, I understand the logic and mechanics of programming and can get by in knocking a script or program together if I have to... However I'm not a programmer. Indeed every time I have to I need to refer back to syntax and it takes my quite a while. I don't doubt that the programmers at EA know much, much more than me (though you again assume that I think I do). What I do know about is distributed application platforms - afterall I'm an infrastructure engineer that's worked with a lot of global household names over the years, architecting, implementing and supporting infrastructure that may not be a game but really isn't many miles away in principle of implementation.

- It's not my professional opinion that tells me the game shouldn't have been released. It's my consumer opinion that says if you're gonna start allowing people to pay for things, make sure it works. My professional opinion understands that it could be capacity, that yes sometimes some things go wrong - but a lot is going wrong this past week beyond just a few hiccups, and that you really should be responding to support cases in the timescale you have set yourself (or even sending a generic message to everyone with outstanding cases saying "sorry we're going to be a bit longer in getting back to you" if you have issues with capacity there also!).

jasonicus321 wrote:
Funny thing is, I rarely have any issues with the game. Any online type game will have server load issues from time to time.

Agree with you here. I have been playing since they reintroduced the game in August. I very rarely have issues and its only been this weekend that It has been anything to the extent it is now.

MrBukey wrote:
That's generally what I do. For some characters it works (like Homer) for others, it doesn't (like Cletus).

Wow, I never noticed that! Just tried it and, my apologies, you are absolutely right! I sort of go in a circle around my Springfield when tasking...first I hit everyone's "thumbs up" icon, and then I circle back around to assign new tasks. I guess Cletus' cash had always been automatically collected before I looped back around to him. Okay, I agree with you...the inconsistency there is weird!